Thursday, 21 August 2008

The Shekinah Construction Company and the Cave - A Church Parable of the last 50 years to the Present Day

My friend Dan (or maybe another Dan) watched from his window as a helicopter descended upon a rough craggy hill a long way in the distance. He could vaguely make out three pallet loads being lowered onto the ground in front of a cave which was hidden in the rocks somewhere near the hilltop. Some people on the ground were then attending to the items and wheeling them into the cave for storage.This all happened in the evening and by morning there seemed to be no trace of anyone working around the outside of the cave.

Then Billy Graham made his way up the hill, peered inside the cave, saw one of the pallets, and made his way down the hill with a pallet truck carrying what he thought was all that was needed for the job in hand. On the first pallet was stacks and stacks of thousands and thousands of invitations, freshly printed.

The Invitation read:

"You are requested to be present at a Shekinah Glory event that will last forever and ever." The slightly annoying thing about the invitation was the vagueness in time details. The invitation seemed to point mostly to a future date, but did include some contemporary details, however nobody could agree firmly on them.

Some time later, waves of other Shekinah construction workers came. There was Morris Cerullo. Winkie Pratney of Youth With a Mission. There was Benny Hinn. Rheinhardt Bonnke, many others.

These all peered further into the cave and noticed two pallet loads. The first one as mentioned…but also a second one with perhaps the most important load in terms of content: It turned out to be the Ark of the Covenant with the very Glory of God actually above it.

This proved very popular because people liked the fact that now the invitations pointed to something that appeared to start now, and went on for ever. The Shekinah celebrations were fantastic and even larger quantities of people were affected as these men all went on the road with their teams. By now also it was easier to teach other workers because the process was made easier by having more than just invitations to study and hand out. There was the real Ark to gaze and be amazed at, and participate in.

They discovered the fastest way to carry the Shekinah glory was on a brand new cart pulled by oxen.This had the convenience that the work was done for you, but it also maintained a nice link with the traditions of the past, that everyone admired.Oxen,you see, added the needed gravitas to the whole affair.

Terry Virgo and Rob Rufus would simply pitch up in a new city, bring a crowd of people with them,skilled in the contents of the two pallets, wheel out the Shekinah and within a few weeks or a couple of years at most they had built "warehouses of the grace of God ", like PCWorld scattered all over the globe. Che Ahn was brilliant at this, so was Yonghi Cho. It was so impressive.

Just one thing though. One thing nobody seemed to notice. Dan had seen three pallet loads being put into the cave. A young man called Todd Bentley became aware that there were in fact three pallet loads in the cave and began wheeling the 3rd one out of the back of the cave for inspection. It was the Florida Revival. Something new was happening!

Todd became increasingly irritated with the other men who had gone before, but he found it difficult to put his finger on why. Because, as they all assured him, they had the invitations, and the most important thing of all, the very Shekinah of God. Joseph Prince was really adamant about this. So Todd , although aware of the third pallet, never actually got to unload it properly and just buckled down, as instructed by Wagner, Che Ahn and others who were on TV, to a daily maintenance check of the new cart.

Todd had more and more trouble with his personal problems. Somehow the grace that Rob Rufus and Joseph Prince were talking about was not helping him as he was driving the cart forward. Rob Rufus, Joseph Prince and many others made encouraging noises to do with Romans Chapters 3,4,5 and 8. Dan wondered to himself, if Todd Bentley had been instructed properly about the contents and usage of the third pallet by his mentors from the beginning, whether he would have had so much trouble.He also noticed that New Cart preachers never went through Romans 6 and 7 properly.

Instead,every time Todd Bentley had personal problems, all would ask about his Cart maintenance schedule.( In fact all the previous apostles of the Shekinah Glory (ON THE CART INC), gathered round Todd at one point, to officially recognise him as a full OX CART evangelist as if he had been an OXCART Fellow Seminarian.) Todd pointed out that his Cart schedule was already pretty hefty, working out at 5 hours. The others reminded him that Benny Hinn thought 6 hours was necessary and carried on driving their own carts forward.

Pretty soon , as with all previous revivals, sooner or later the cart hit a severe bump and Todd was reprimanded very firmly by some and beaten into the ground by others. But the one thing that Dan noticed was that nobody had even mentioned that the third pallet had made a brief if somewhat unexplored appearance in front of the cave.

Dan went out of his house to take a closer look. When he arrived at the cave, in the darkness he could see that the Zerubbabel group (http://www.zpress.org/newsletter/) had already taken the cover off the pallet and were already working with the content quietly and unnoticed. What on earth was it? It appeared to be two long wooden poles or something. He asked them what they were going to do with the two poles? Were they going to carry the Ark of the Testimony with it? They said they didn’t believe in the experience of the second pallet. But they were gilding the poles quietly and that they would be happy with that and handing out invitations from the first pallet. (Rob Rufus had told Dan not to have anything to do with the poles. That’s New Age he said. I used to see fakirs sitting on top of them before I was converted. Have nothing to do with the third pallet Dan. It’s all grace and oxcarts now.)

Dan asked Zerubbabel,” But what about Che Ahn? Rob Rufus, Joseph Prince? Morris Cerullo, Benny Hinn? Youth With A Mission? “ “Never heard of them”, they replied. “Are they people on TV? We don’t do TV. And we believe the gold on the poles is everywhere, and that is enough for us.”

Dan was a bit shocked. Also he could see a long and protracted debate going on between them and people like Madame Guyon, and Mother Basilea Schlink, R.Edward Miller , Ruth Heflin, and Gene Edwards. They were all saying the poles should be called brokenness, like the pole that Jacob leaned on, and the staff that Moses had which budded. But Zerubbabel were adamant that these poles of the Christ Life within had now superceded everything else, because they reversed the original root problem in Genesis 3:5. So Dan went away totally bemused.

He thought to himself: "Rob Rufus , Terry Virgo ,Joseph Prince, Morris Cerullo, Che Ahn all had the second pallet, but hadn’t much clue about how the third pallet contents worked, or weren’t entirely sure of the pallet's existence. Because after all, it was grace, and the New Covenant! All you needed to do was drive a new cart around with the songs ,message and contents of the first and second pallet.

Zerubbabel were familiar with the third pallet as were many others from the past, but didn’t feel it had any connection with the 2nd pallet. Which was a bit odd...since the poles were only made to operate with the other pallets. They just liked the poles as they were, now gilded. And Todd Bentley was sitting in the corner of the cave confused, somewhat battered, and believing that somehow there was a way that all three pallets could be used together, so they could do away with the rather rubbish new cart way of pushing the glory of God around."I SUBMIT THIS FOR DISCUSSIONThe Basis of the Florida references comes from a report that was sent me surrounding the last weeks, that I have also sent Dan Bowen. Both Christine and I have been puzzling over the different strands of things that were taking place in Florida.

5 comments:

I have to say, I'm thoroughly confused. Is there anyway you could make the three pallets more clearly understandable, or lay the whole thing out for me? Jesus always did for the disciples hehe, so I imagine you're willing as well...

Chris, you really have me hanging on a thread here, I keep popping back in to see if you responded to Julie, heehee, I guess I too am a bit confused and would love to hear in laymens terms more of what you mean by this post!!.........

Julia and Lydia Joy,I sent Dan some behind the scenes info on Lakeland, but also mentioned I was off with Ben and my wife Christine to Rivercamp for the bank Holiday weekend here. This was stunning on so many levels.I will doubtless do more about this.So...anyhow I came back to your questions. Even if I am able to explain this a bit, actually the situation is that all the real personages, Apart from Dan who may refer to our Dan, or not...it's up to how he feels about that, anyhow all the recognized names are somehow unable to grasp what the other is doing, and how each group is important. I don't mean a little bit important. I mean, the proper working together of all these groups and their revelation would cause a world explosion of titanic proportions. I do not say that in a dreamy fashion either. I have just returned from a mini prototype in the form of Rivercamp. Jesus, at the Cross, enabled all three areas of spiritual growth for us. On pallet one, we have the basic gospel invitation. On Pallet two we have the Baptism in The Spirit and our subsequent drive into a set of harsh circumstances that test us to the core. Most, at this stage never get beyond level two. If we do not harden our hearts but press on and on, eventually Christ leads us into a fullexpression of Him operating through us. And this is real, symbolised by the poles that were the only ever proper way of moving God's Presence around. 7 steps , then sacrifice,(actually many many bulls worth of sacrifice) then another 7 steps and so on. Only strict obedient listening to the Holy Spirit and doing exactly what you hear Him saying brings about a true work of God. All the rest is simply adding numbers of Christians, who maybe saved, but never grow to manifest much in the way of fruit and character graces. And , frankly , warehouses of saved, but bickering/bitter/judgemental/foul hearted Christians, who never grow, but only reproduce after themselves....is to my mind not funny.

The purpose of this blog is to teach the "tricks of the trade" of the third level, so we get mature people who reproduce after their own kind.One problem we have is that Zerubbabel who are so incredibly clear on how this all works, don't seem to have a clue about charismatic things we now take for granted. So this can be very offputting for the desperate seeker.

YES, YES, YES!!!!!!We are the priests that carry the ark(Christ) by virtue of His imputed and imparted righteousness and therefore the ark and the Glory reside in us. We are how God is appearing to the world!You got it!Call it Third Day, Third Level, Feast of Tabernacles, Holy of Holies...whatever you want. It is the reality of the indwelling Life of Christ in His Body.We are the priests that carry the ark; we are the ark containing the Glory, and we offer the world the bread and wine- the crucified Christ.The Church has always been this because the work of the cross was finished but our belief (experience) had to catch up with our reality. The Revelation of Jesus Christ- through His Body!Most of the Church thinks God is going to finish us up in the by and by...God is still waiting for us to figure out who we are and begin to walk in it!Sorry, but this is exciting to me.I do know a minister named Lynn Hiles who has been sharing this revelation with Joseph Prince...who said God had been revealing this to him. Thought it was cool how you named the different ministries...we need to be careful not to think we have all Truth, after all, so did they. But God is revealing this Grace message, this Life message to His Church. The message is Christ in you; the hope of Glory. The Wonderful Mystery. That simple yet that profound.

"Most of the Church thinks God is going to finish us up in the by and by...God is still waiting for us to figure out who we are and begin to walk in it!"

Amen! This is a huge problem in the church and I never knew it or understood it. Until Rob Rufus.... he has been hammering this very thing all year! We, the church have the keys to the kingdom and we don't use them for the benefit of the church and the lost. Bill Johnson gets this and is moving in a Kingdom mentality. As well as the healing rooms ministry is seeing this as well. I think there are many circles that are beginning to see grace or the full gospel of salvation, which will hopefully lead to seeing more and more a kingdom mindset, or should I say a gospel of the kingdom........or perhaps a book of Acts church moving in word and spirit and full power from an understanding of identity as well as the understanding of what it really looks like to be baptized in the Holy Spirit...........I am trying to wrap my mind around my personal identity versus my corporate role, does that make sense??

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This blog was conceived on the 8th August 2008,hence its title. 8 is the number of new beginnings, which was also the prophetic declaration over the Church through various prophets in 2008.On,Now,To the Third Level is not some elite form of Christianity. It is God's Norm. Watchman Nee would have called it the Normal Christian Life. Others in time past called it brokenness. We call it life. Rob Rufus explains in "Taking Away The Veil" that Christ has opened the way through to God for us. We can live there.Why bother using the phrase "Third Level"? Because there are 3 places in God's Tabernacle. And there are 3 stages of growth in 1 John 2. More than this, historically and corporately we have known forgiveness by grace. Then from 1906 onward the Church has known a charismatic empowering by grace. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit and supernatural manifestations.But what we are now saying is we can live full-time to God's glory and in God's glory. There are keys of faith to each stage and in these last days God has been revealing the grace keys to this final level....a level that has had the Veil Taken Away.It is the level that is the full realisation of the New Covenant in Christ's Blood, but also the life that God promised when He said "The Knowledge of the Glory of God shall cover the Earth as the Waters Cover the Sea".A FULL LIST OF SUBJECT LABELS CAN BE FOUND LISTED ALPHABETICALLY AT THE BASE OF THIS PAGE.

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This blog has a pre-history in around 100 pages on the comments sections of Dan Bowen's blog - Life on Wings,(see Dan's Vault Link in Chris's Resources below)Much autobiography is included. All posts are by me unless otherwise named.